


Regenero

by touchstoneaf



Category: Smallville
Genre: Clex - Freeform, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-04-27
Updated: 2017-04-27
Packaged: 2018-10-24 16:34:19
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,611
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10745574
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/touchstoneaf/pseuds/touchstoneaf
Summary: How far would they have to go to break the cycle?  What act and what sacrifice would be enough to bring them back to each other?





	Regenero

**“Coming Out”  
(The Prequel to “Regenero”)**

That face that haunted him...the one he always tried to banish, to no avail... It was almost like a nightmare to see it on screen. It would haunt him forever now. Now that he was showing it to the world. No chance of getting rid of it; not anymore.

Once that face had belonged to him alone. 

"Tell us! What's your name?"

/Yes, tell them your name, Clark./

"I don't have one yet. Maybe you could give me one."

/Humph./

"What do you stand for?"

"Truth..."

/Oh, _sure_./

"Justice..."

/ _Your_ justice.../

"And the American way."

/Oh Christ./ He thought he might just vomit.

"How did you get these powers?" 

"Are you a mutant? A meta-human?" 

/Yes, tell us, Clark. Where did you get them?/ 

He could wish he wasn't leaning forward in anticipation of the words he had waited so long to hear. He wasn't sure if he wanted to hear them or not. To hear them given to others, when they had not been entrusted to him. 

Was it worth that pain, just to hear them finally spoken?

"I'm from a planet called Krypton. Don't worry; I come in peace."

It was anguish. Their titters, the clumsy attempt at humor. Misplaced; but only to him. 

Not relief. Agony. A burning knife through the heart. 

It brought no peace. /You stand there, blithely telling the whole world your secret, the big damned secret that you couldn't tell me for years? That I wasn't _worthy_ to share... You must have thought I was too stupid for _words_ to buy your lies for so long!/ 

/You _knew_ I was desperate./

/You took and took anyway./

/ _Damn_ you./

"Are there any others like you here?"

Those eyes he knew so well looked right at the camera. Right into his soul. Spoke directly to him. "No. I'm alone. I've always been alone, and I always will be." A pointed pause. "Some of us are meant to be alone."

It was a message—almost an apology—and it was so true that he wanted to cry. But all his tears had been wrung out years ago...and he was dry. 

Somehow it seemed fitting that Clark would steal his words for this. Because they had made each other alone. They had had one chance—one encapsulated time—to be something more than that...and they had betrayed it. 

They had betrayed it together.

He couldn't help but laugh at the screen currently playing out his worst nightmare. Couldn't deny the bittersweet joy of knowing he would see that face again, and often, now. The one that he had denied, and been denied, for so long.

It still haunted his dreams.

He would give anything to be alone again. Because what lay in that space between having everything—fleeting—and having nothing was somehow worse than either...and it was forever.  
* * *

**“Interlude”  
(“Dal Segno Al Coda”)**

The endless round of it… It was like a trap. A hamster’s wheel on endless rotation, kept turning by two relentlessly exhaustive enthusiasts thereon and merrily galloping on to oblivion. Because they could not step off. They had only one way to connect anymore, and so they had to create these…opportunities. To touch. To know each was still there for the other. 

And so it went. Daring each other…so that they could save each other, and reaffirm their unbreakable connection even in this twisted way. An unending game of chess, with never a clear winner…because neither wanted to win.

The glory was in the playing. In the chance to be close again. 

To dance with your enemy was better than having no partner at all. 

One saving…the other entrapping. But entrapping not to hurt him…too much. Or at least no more than _he_ had been hurt. No; trapping just to get close. To _touch_ him. And, yes, to get some of his power back; all that had been taken. To comfort himself with the belief that he had power of _choice_. 

/Will I do it this time? Or will I be content, once more, with only this?/ 

/Yes. This time, I will be content. But the power is in my hands./ 

Because the fool kept coming. Never pushed his enemy away, never stopped playing his side of the board. And as long as that was true, the game would go on.

So they hurt each other…to save each other, again and again.

It was how they had started.

Now, it was all they had left.  
* * *

**“Regenero”  
(To Be Reborn)**

**Part I.**

He had finally done it. He had killed Superman. “I killed you, you bastard,” he whispered aloud. Gloated, rubbing his hands together in dark glee as again and again on the banks of high-res screens and from every angle, he watched it unfold. Superman in his hated blue clown-suit with that ridiculous cape, swirling in to save the day. To gain the adulation of the people once more; blindly, stupidly confident that he could never be touched. Coming in for a landing, already with his arms crossed like the world had to make way for him. Then hesitating. That faint look of doubt, nearly dismissed. The sense that something was wrong here. 

The taint of Lex.

Moving too fast now to turn. Caught…and wilting under the barrage of kryptonite-laced nerve gas that exploded…from nowhere. 

Crumbling. Falling. 

He’d done it. “I _got_ you,” Lex breathed. 

God, how he hated Superman. That _thing_ , that _alien_ , that monolith that had stolen Clark from him, made him hate Lex. Had turned Lex into what he had never wanted to be, squeezed him into a role he had never wanted, because it had been the only remaining path he had been offered, the only avenue he had been given to remain relevant in Clark’s life. To stay in his orbit. 

Superman had stolen _everything_ from him. But now Superman was dead and he was free. He could resume his life, finally; turn his gifts, his abilities at last to other things, because he had…

He had killed Clark.

 _Clark_ was dead.

Clark was dead too.

Dead…and Lex…

All too late the realization came; Lex would never be free.

The anguished howl that escaped the penthouse lab was that of a soul lost beyond all salvation; a soul that had destroyed its only reason for existing.  
***

**"Regenero": Part II.**

He was moving before he knew it.

Behind him, the screens continued to play that noxious image over and over. It made his stomach churn with burning nausea as he fled. /Oh you fool, you fool…/ But who was the fool? Clark, or himself? Saw it flashing forever behind his retinas in triplicate as he raced down the steps two at a time. /Idiot! I never expected you to _fall_ for that!/ 

How many times had he laid trap after trap, only to be found out in time so that the game could go on? / _Damn_ you, Clark, why so easy; why _now?_ /

Could it be that Clark, too, had tired of the endless circle of their being and, always the martyr, decided in full awareness to end it, finally?

It would be a thing that fool would indeed do. He would do it…so that Lex could move on. Because of all people, Clark knew what he was capable of…and he would do it, if only so that Lex could turn his face from this endless stalemate and return his gifts to the world. 

How many times had the vaunted creature in blue said to him, “I know it’s my fault, Lex, that you are what you are. I know it’s too late…but I’d take it back if I could.”

Was this, then, his final restitution for all that had gone between them when they, and especially he, had been too young to know any better?

Not a car this time, falling gracefully over a rural Kansas bridge, in endless ballet. /What the hell is wrong with you?/

Lex had wanted that admission; had in his pain wanted vengeance…but not like this.

Not yet another a burst of unseen speed caught on replay behind the barking cough of an inconsequential kryptonite bullet. 

/What the hell is wrong with _me?_ /

Not eternal. Not _forever_. 

/With _us!_ /

But it would be just like Clark to give himself up, just like this and indeed for ever; a sacrifice made out of outdated guilt. 

For him. To end it.

/NO!/

Not like this.

But all he could see now was Clark. Just Clark. 

Falling.

He caromed off the too-slow doors of the stainless steel elevator like a billiard ball shot over a fuchsia-felted table in a Victorian castle once, long ago. Bounced in reaction. Punched at the button like a madman, the dense black prosthetic of his limb denting the wall in his haste. 

He had to get there, had to get to the body, had to…

“MachJet. Now.” The words choked out of him and into the wrist unit. /You imbecile, you incomprehensible _fool!_ I can’t believe you walked _into_ that!/ 

/I never thought you’d _do_ it!/ 

Unlike the inefficient elevator, the jet was waiting for him on the roof when he reached it. He was inside before the stair had fully touched ground. “Kiln Lake Quarry. Yesterday.” And they were in the air. Not quite supersonic, but close. And the barrier was broken. They were there in seconds. 

The gas had largely dispersed. The ubiquitous “Mercy” offered him a mask. He batted it away. If he died now, he died as he should; wilted upon the body of his adversary.

His only beloved.

Behind him, somewhere far away, there was a voice. “You did it, Boss. You finally got him.” 

Hapless flunky.

Somehow he moved closer; almost curiously. Strangely, sickly empty as he stared. How innocent he looked there, lying crumpled on the ground; once-heroic form dusted faintly green, glow muted. It had been so fast that his perfect face didn’t even look distressed. 

He looked young.

He looked fifteen again.

He looked like the boy that Lex had loved, and Lex didn’t even notice it when he fell to his knees; too empty even to scream, or keen, or…

He had killed _Clark_. He had only wanted to get rid of that hateful costume, that hateful demon that had possessed the boy and taken him away before he could be a man that Lex could…keep. 

In what deranged corner of Lex’s twisted, electro-shock-damaged, pain-crazed mind could he have thought that this act would somehow create alchemy? Separate the hated from the loved like oil from water, rip the boy free from the hero and give him back? Back to Lex, deliver him. Deliver them both…and give them back to each other, and what they had been.

Clark was dead.

His reason for living had been reft from him…and by his own hand. 

It was true symbiosis, known all too late.

This time his howl would have stopped the world turning if he had the strength left to care. But devoid. It was devoid of even the shreds of something we called a soul.  
***

**"Regenero": Part III.**

Somewhere behind him, again; the calm uninflected voice he had come to depend on. Tess. Always Mercy; who understood everything and never judged. “You know, the shit is still glowing, Lex.”

His eyes swiveled, numbly. He stared; dumbly. It was true. Superman… _Clark_ still glowed. The fucking rock dust _still glowed_. Faintly, but…it was there. A sign of possible redemption.

It snapped him back. Back to reality. Back to life. 

Back to hope. “Bring him. _Now.”_

He had labs. He had a million labs. He knew everything about Su…about Clark now. He knew everything one could possibly know about kryptonite; about the properties of it, its interactions with the Kryptonian biological system. He _knew_ … 

He could save Clark. Save himself.

And Clark would no doubt assume that this had been his plan all along. To get him alone somewhere; weak, captive, at Lex’s mercy. To be experimented on, tested, prodded, cut open…

But for what? He already knew it all. Everything he had never been told before; and for good reason. The thought of doing it anyway, just for spite?

Could never. Would never. Had wanted it so long with a need like lust; but no more. Not…now.

Clark could kill him now, for what he had done. If he wanted to, and Lex would not flinch. 

Except… 

Clark never would. Somehow, he had always known what Lex had not. That for one of them to die would be for both of them to fail. 

No. They would go on…and that was almost as bad. Almost, but not quite. 

/No./ No. It would _not_ continue. Not as before. Lex knew in that moment that he could not go on fighting Clark. Not now. 

Clark had died…and he had won. And in that epiphany Lex had found the absolute bottom; the place where Clark was no longer there to save him. 

But…far from supplying him freedom, he had found it was an empty place.

Aliens lived and died and drove you mad. But angels… Angels sacrificed themselves to give you a second chance. And a third one. 

A hundred. 

Finally, one of them had to take.

It was time to go home, start again. And this time, make it stick.

Clark had won. Lex had nowhere else left to go but up.  
* * *

**“Dal Segno Al Fine…on a Riverbank”**

_(One Long Hard Year Later…)_

Lex hefted the willow branch he had prized from the side of the road, swished it in a still-elegant riposte despite his right-handed grip. “I still can’t believe you walked into that.” A sidelong teasing look that made the haunted expression in his face fade somewhat. “You must be losing your touch.”

Clark eyed his one-time nemesis tolerantly. “I told you; I was tired of fighting.” Ran a finger over his scarred upper lip, spoke softly. “And I missed you.”

Time was—back when things were still difficult between them—Lex would have pulled away, unsure how to deal with that kind of easy affection. Now he leaned perceptibly into the touch. 

He had to push up to his tiptoes to kiss the man; and dammit, that was the most unfair thing about all of this. The willow branch ‘foil’ dropped to the water beside them as long arms, one pale and one black-gloved, laced around a golden neck.

“You’re the epitome of the soft touch, Clark. Ripping off car roofs, jumping into lame booby traps…”

Clark grinned provokingly. “Kissing former arch-nemeses on riverbanks…”

Lex huffed, the lines of old pain, guilt, and resentment dissolving; one reclaimed memory at a time. “Hey, this is _our_ riverbank. Don’t knock it.”

Clark kept his expression solemn with an effort. “Perish the thought that I would knock the stuff of legends.”

“Bite me.” No rancor in it anymore. It had been a tough year. They had begun again. A faintly wicked grin; just this side of openly provocative. “I’m serious. Bite me.”

Clark swept his best frenemy up into his arms with a carefree flourish. “You know you’re asking for it.”

“Quaking in my boots, here.”

His grip tightened with loving demand. “At least yours aren’t red.”

The kiss was long and toe-curling…and worth everything they had gone through to get here. 

It was breathless moments before this hard-bitten former evil mad-scientist could get together the requisite neurons to speak. But he had to. It was necessary. 

“About your obscenely clown-like footwear…”  
* * *


End file.
